BioN­Tech, in a move to stream­line its op­er­a­tions, is set to close its fac­to­ry in Sin­ga­pore that it bought from No­var­tis just over three years ago.

The fa­cil­i­ty at the Tuas Bio­med­ical Park, which em­ploys 85 staffers, will be closed by the end of Feb­ru­ary 2027 to "align ca­pac­i­ty” with its clin­i­cal pipeline, a com­pa­ny spokesper­son told End­points News. The fac­to­ry man­u­fac­tures clin­i­cal and com­mer­cial mR­NA-based vac­cines and ther­a­peu­tics.

The Sin­ga­pore fa­cil­i­ty was de­signed to be BioN­Tech’s re­gion­al head­quar­ters af­ter it pur­chased the site from No­var­tis in 2022. The year pri­or, the com­pa­ny an­nounced its vi­sion for a re­gion­al hub in the Asia Pa­cif­ic re­gion with sup­port from the Sin­ga­pore Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Board.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has signed an ex­ec­u­tive or­der con­firm­ing that drug prod­ucts that come from a sub­set of coun­tries and man­u­fac­tur­ers will face 100% tar­iffs with­in the next sev­er­al months.

Un­der the White House­'s tar­iff plan, man­u­fac­tur­ers with a "most fa­vored na­tion" (MFN) pric­ing deal and that are on­shoring ca­pac­i­ty to the US won't face the tar­iffs. Al­so ex­empt will be drugs from places that have struck deals with the US, in­clud­ing the UK, EU and South Ko­rea, ac­cord­ing to Thurs­day's an­nounce­ment.

The levies are be­ing is­sued un­der Sec­tion 232 of the Trade Ex­pan­sion Act, fol­low­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the De­part­ment of Com­merce that start­ed in April 2025. But the many ex­emp­tions in the or­der mean that on­ly a lim­it­ed set of prod­ucts will like­ly face tar­iffs in the end.

Steve Ubl, the leader of the drug in­dus­try's pow­er­ful Wash­ing­ton, DC lob­by­ing group PhRMA, will step down af­ter more than a decade as CEO.

End­points News broke the news of his an­tic­i­pat­ed ex­it ear­li­er Wednes­day, and PhRMA con­firmed Ubl’s plans in a state­ment lat­er in the day.

In an in­ter­view with End­points, Ubl said he had orig­i­nal­ly dis­cussed his de­par­ture with a small cir­cle of PhRMA’s board about a year and a half ago, but agreed to stay through at least the first part of the new ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The an­nounce­ment comes ahead of a piv­otal US elec­tion this year that will de­cide con­trol of Con­gress, and the tim­ing will give PhRMA sev­er­al months to search for a new CEO. Last year, the group spent about $38 mil­lion on lob­by­ing ef­forts, ac­cord­ing to lob­by­ing dis­clo­sures.

Plus, news about WuXi XDC:

💰 Sh­ionogi's BAR­DA con­tract for Fetro­ja: The drug­mak­er has been award­ed a con­tract worth $119 mil­lion, with the po­ten­tial to in­crease to $482 mil­lion, from the Bio­med­ical Ad­vanced Re­search and De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty. Sh­iono­gi will es­tab­lish a US fac­to­ry to make the an­tibi­ot­ic Fetro­ja, which is used to treat gram-neg­a­tive bac­te­ria in­fec­tions. The con­tract will al­so fund a sup­ple­men­tal new drug ap­pli­ca­tion for Fetro­ja as a treat­ment for hos­pi­tal-ac­quired and ven­ti­la­tor-as­so­ci­at­ed bac­te­r­i­al pneu­mo­nia in chil­dren.

🏭 Sci­nai Im­munother­a­peu­tics com­pletes set­up of CD­MO busi­ness: Af­ter its re­org, the com­pa­ny has ce­ment­ed the set­up of its new CD­MO arm, called Sci­nai Bio­phar­ma Ser­vices. All CD­MO ser­vices and roles have been moved to a fa­cil­i­ty in Yavne, Is­rael, which Sci­nai ac­quired from Re­ci­pharm ear­li­er this year. Sci­nai ex­pects its CD­MO unit to gen­er­ate $5 mil­lion in rev­enue for 2026, af­ter col­lect­ing $1.3 mil­lion in 2025.

The White House this week be­gan of­fer­ing a $950-per-month ver­sion of Ab­b­Vie's megablock­buster Hu­mi­ra on TrumpRx, even as the drug dis­count web­site al­so of­fers two Hu­mi­ra biosim­i­lars from Pfiz­er and Am­gen that both cost less than $300 per month.

It re­mains un­clear who would pur­chase brand-name Hu­mi­ra through TrumpRx. The cash-pay gov­ern­ment web­site does­n't ac­cept in­sur­ance, and those on Hu­mi­ra with cov­er­age can pay as lit­tle as $5. Those on Medicare have seen their out-of-pock­et ex­pens­es capped at $2,000 per year. Its in­clu­sion was part of Ab­b­Vie's "most fa­vored na­tion" deal with the White House in Jan­u­ary.

The White House threw its weight be­hind ef­forts to help US biotech com­pete with Chi­na, us­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion's bud­get pro­pos­al to out­line FDA pol­i­cy changes to speed up tri­als, cut costs for com­pa­nies that do ex­per­i­men­tal work in the US, and ex­pe­dite reg­u­la­to­ry re­views.

One of the re­forms is a new clin­i­cal tri­al path­way that re­flects the quick­er process­es oth­er coun­tries have. The ex­pe­dit­ed path­way would be for some Phase 1 tri­als where there are enough ex­ist­ing pre­clin­i­cal da­ta to sat­is­fy reg­u­la­tors. The FDA specif­i­cal­ly ex­pects the path­way to help “small­er biotech­nol­o­gy firms,” say­ing that the US’ ex­ist­ing IND process has fu­eled growth in Chi­na and Aus­tralia.

“The goal of this new path­way is to ac­cel­er­ate the drug de­vel­op­ment time­line and en­cour­age US biotech­nol­o­gy in­vest­ment — in line with the Pres­i­dent’s ac­tions to on­shore the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try,” ac­cord­ing to the bud­get re­quest.